The Only Way To Fix The USA Ryder Cup Team's Biggest Problem

Patrick Reed of the United States lines up a putt on the 8th green during the Singles Matches of the 2014 Ryder Cup on the PGA Centenary course at the Gleneagles Hotel on September 28, 2014 in Auchterarder, Scotland.
Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
If you spent time this week at the local country club or around any khakis-clad dads, you no doubt heard intense discussions about the great crisis facing our land: America hasn't won the Ryder Cup since 2008. (Thanks, Obama.)

How, exactly, are we to smugly proclaim global American superiority if our best healthy golfers can't out-golf the golfers from 50 sovereign nations that occupy a land mass situated west of the Caucasus Mountains? It's a real problem.

Luckily, in the agonizing days since our golfing heroes fell 16 1/2-to-11 1/2 in Gleneagles, Scotland, our country's finest golf minds have been racking their brains nonstop on how to fix what ails us. Logic, of course, tell us that American golfers aren't hitting their golf balls into the holes in fewer shots than their European competition — probably because the current crop of European golfers are … (gasp) … better than America's golfers.

WHAT?! NO! That's ridiculous. To even consider such a possibility would be akin to setting the stars and stripes ablaze and then urinating on the flaming remains.

The problem is actually America's Ryder Cup coaching. Or captaincy, to use official Ryder Cup terminology. Ryder Cup captains are in charge of saying who plays and with whom. And they've apparently been saying who plays and with whom quite erroneously of late.

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"There were two things that allow us to play our best I think that Paul Azinger did," said Phil Mickelson of the victorious 2008 captain following his team's latest defeat. "And one was he got everybody invested in the process. He got everybody invested in who they were going to play with, who the picks were going to be, who was going to be in their pod, who — when they would play, and they had a great leader for each pod."

Oh, pod.

"Nobody here was in on any decision," continued Mickelson, who has a losing record in the Ryder Cup dating back to 1995 — proving he's an expert on what doesn't work.

Phil Mickelson of the United States talks during a press conference after the United States were defeated by Europe after the Singles Matches of the 2014 Ryder Cup on the PGA Centenary course at the Gleneagles Hotel on September 28, 2014 in Auchterarder, Scotland.
Harry Engels/Getty Images
Inexplicably, during non-country-versus-continent golf tournaments, American golfers have no say over when they tee-off or who they play with. There, players are expected to receive their assignment, hit the links, and outplay their competition (read: the aforementioned hit-the-ball-in-the-hole-in-fewer-shots approach).

When Ryder Cup rolls around, however, that's all out the window. Apparently, if the Americans don't get to play with their absolute bestest pal, teeing off at precisely 11:13 a.m. with the sun at their back, after an intimate, motivational hot stone massage from their captain, well … what is everyone back home even expecting to happen at the Ryder Cup, anyway?

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Predictably, some are pushing to give Paul Azinger the job back for 2016, hoping his pods and pep rallies will cause his players to be better at golf than McIlroy & Friends. Others — a small, uniformed minority — say the captaincy is comically overrated and irrelevant; that it doesn't matter if a honeyed ham "captained" the team as long as the U.S. golfers simply did golf better than their competition for three days.

And if that's too mantra'y, put this in Daly's pipe and smoke it: 1) getting a good buzz on before every match by chugging a case of Bud Light — for the nerves — to become standard 'Murican operating procedure; 2) mandatory belching in all Europeans' backswings; and 3) constant reminders (gallery signs will be provided, free of charge) of how we saved their asses back in W-W-I-I.

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Or we can try the pod thing and make sure Phil Mickelson's delicate self-esteem is tended to.